SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE GAME
When I first played the remastered version some months ago, I thought it was a pretty ok game and continued with my life. But for some reason, the game stuck in my mind for a long while, like it had something special in it that I couldn't wash off. Now, it allured me to play the original version this time.
After playing Yakuza 2 and comparing the two, you can feel how important this game was for the series. I have yet to play Kenzan, and I know it was the first step in introducing this saga to the more realistic approach using the PS3 engine. But from what I've seen from it, Kenzan walked so Y3 could run. This game reimagined the whole aesthetic. Kamurocho goes from this gritty, dark, kinda noir vibe that PS2 games had to a sharp, stylish, and more flashy design. The city is more dazzling than ever and adding that it was the one to introduce minigames (a whole lot of them) makes up for this "Sleepless Town" essence. Kamurocho is just a LOT of fun to be running around.
-- Narrative --
My main problem with the game is the overall writing of the criminal plot. Coming from Yakuza 2, which manages to maintain its mysteriousness, unwrapping little by little and keeping you engaged with meaningful events, this one was kind of a letdown. The premise is so interesting, but it could have been handled a lot better. All the enigma and threat that Joji represented as a character ends up disappearing since he's just... a good guy👍; They don't even try to give both Joji and Kiryu more time on screen, to at least poke at the wound of a living picture of the most important person in his life that passed away being there, someone that knew more of him, get that emotional side of Kiryu, no.
Also, the lack of Black Monday presence throughout the game and the way they don't really show or try to create a menacing aura around the organization makes you not really care that much about all that stuff at the end not gonna lie.
Anyway, I'm not going to expand much else into it. The ending, though... I really, really like it since it makes a certain parallel with the previous 2 games in terms of Kiryu's existential journey and makes it feel like the actual END of a trilogy. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. Even if it's not intentional, when I realized this, I was kinda blown away.
Both in Yakuza 1 and 2, Kiryu's afterward moments after dealing with the "main" conflict of the plot, usually ending in tragedy, he gives up; We tend to see a very stubborn, angry Kiryu that makes his way through purely with this raw violence, not really thinking things twice and is given either a reason or another chance to live by someone else. In Yakuza 1, he loses all the most important bonds of his entire life, destroyed by the yakuza world, Reina, Shinji, Nishiki, Kazama, and Yumi. Staring silently at the void, prefers to get arrested for life since nothing is left for him out there, nothing worth living. Date reminds him of Haruka. Try living for the girl.
He decides to keep going.
In Yakuza 2, he doesn't even try to escape, in this case, Kaoru reminds him ... Haruka is waiting for you, but even so, he accepts that she will never be safe with him. After all, she has been kidnapped multiple times for his past and constant engagement with the Clan's activity, so he decides to just die, right there, while everything blows away. He knows Haruka will be safer with someone like Date by his side. Even so, Terada, the very person who betrayed him "gives" him another chance to live, one that he would not regret.
In Yakuza 3, you can feel all of this in Kiryu's character, the way he talks to people, to his children, he's full of hope and wisdom from a very rough life, and he's finally trying to live a real life, one away from the yakuza, and he tries to pour all of his knowledge, values and experiences into his kids to give them a better life, one that he never had.
The situations in Morning Glory are kinda silly, and a lot of times oddly specific; But every time, at the end of these little mundane problems, Kiryu's speeches hit you in the gut, because they are messages filled with such love and a kind of complexity that surprises you coming from him, a very flawed man. Every time Kiryu watches his kids do good, smiling, it warms my heart.
I didn't remember Rikiya's death scene being so well done, I honestly think it is one of the more memorable scenes RGG has done, even if his sacrifice is not that "well" staged. First time in the whole saga Kiryu completely breaks down as he cries and his voice cracks, yes he also cries when his father dies but, this time is so much stronger as if a channel of all his reprimed emotions hit him at that specific moment like a fucking train; I also think this moment is particularly sad since his death represents a direct consequence of his yakuza past getting up to him, he remembers he can't escape and all his loved ones can be taken away from him.
Mine acts as a "what Kiryu could have been." You could even say he's the personification of Nishiki, and he's standing in front of him, once again, but Kiryu is not the same. He has grown; now it's his time to give purpose to someone's life, and he does, resulting in what we see as Mine's ending. He thinks he's too far gone to keep living but decides to end it all with a pure reason not born from hatred.
This game has an odd connection to blood relationships and orphans. Kiryu is an orphan, Mine is an orphan, obviously, all his children are orphans. An orphan is a representation of a human being left stranded, deprived of the first connection to LOVE that a person CAN (not always) have, Mine is a representation of one possible outcome, resents others, resents relationships, and is distrustful since he was taken away of this so early in life. Kiryu on the other hand, recognizes this fact and builds bonds around him, he had the luck of always having caring people by his side. ODDLY SIMILAR TO GAARA AND NARUTO... wtf, crazy.
Kiryu is stabbed at the end; he falls on the ground as he bleeds, staring at the sky, with the possibility of just dying right there. And that's when he says, "Even in your final moments, you can still learn to believe in someone." I know this is directly related to Mine, but I think he's at peace because now he has something to live for, and he won't surrender like he has done when facing death. He smiles; he has a family waiting for him at Morning Glory. All is going to be okay.
When I first played the remastered version some months ago, I thought it was a pretty ok game and continued with my life. But for some reason, the game stuck in my mind for a long while, like it had something special in it that I couldn't wash off. Now, it allured me to play the original version this time.
After playing Yakuza 2 and comparing the two, you can feel how important this game was for the series. I have yet to play Kenzan, and I know it was the first step in introducing this saga to the more realistic approach using the PS3 engine. But from what I've seen from it, Kenzan walked so Y3 could run. This game reimagined the whole aesthetic. Kamurocho goes from this gritty, dark, kinda noir vibe that PS2 games had to a sharp, stylish, and more flashy design. The city is more dazzling than ever and adding that it was the one to introduce minigames (a whole lot of them) makes up for this "Sleepless Town" essence. Kamurocho is just a LOT of fun to be running around.
-- Narrative --
My main problem with the game is the overall writing of the criminal plot. Coming from Yakuza 2, which manages to maintain its mysteriousness, unwrapping little by little and keeping you engaged with meaningful events, this one was kind of a letdown. The premise is so interesting, but it could have been handled a lot better. All the enigma and threat that Joji represented as a character ends up disappearing since he's just... a good guy👍; They don't even try to give both Joji and Kiryu more time on screen, to at least poke at the wound of a living picture of the most important person in his life that passed away being there, someone that knew more of him, get that emotional side of Kiryu, no.
Also, the lack of Black Monday presence throughout the game and the way they don't really show or try to create a menacing aura around the organization makes you not really care that much about all that stuff at the end not gonna lie.
Anyway, I'm not going to expand much else into it. The ending, though... I really, really like it since it makes a certain parallel with the previous 2 games in terms of Kiryu's existential journey and makes it feel like the actual END of a trilogy. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. Even if it's not intentional, when I realized this, I was kinda blown away.
Both in Yakuza 1 and 2, Kiryu's afterward moments after dealing with the "main" conflict of the plot, usually ending in tragedy, he gives up; We tend to see a very stubborn, angry Kiryu that makes his way through purely with this raw violence, not really thinking things twice and is given either a reason or another chance to live by someone else. In Yakuza 1, he loses all the most important bonds of his entire life, destroyed by the yakuza world, Reina, Shinji, Nishiki, Kazama, and Yumi. Staring silently at the void, prefers to get arrested for life since nothing is left for him out there, nothing worth living. Date reminds him of Haruka. Try living for the girl.
He decides to keep going.
In Yakuza 2, he doesn't even try to escape, in this case, Kaoru reminds him ... Haruka is waiting for you, but even so, he accepts that she will never be safe with him. After all, she has been kidnapped multiple times for his past and constant engagement with the Clan's activity, so he decides to just die, right there, while everything blows away. He knows Haruka will be safer with someone like Date by his side. Even so, Terada, the very person who betrayed him "gives" him another chance to live, one that he would not regret.
In Yakuza 3, you can feel all of this in Kiryu's character, the way he talks to people, to his children, he's full of hope and wisdom from a very rough life, and he's finally trying to live a real life, one away from the yakuza, and he tries to pour all of his knowledge, values and experiences into his kids to give them a better life, one that he never had.
The situations in Morning Glory are kinda silly, and a lot of times oddly specific; But every time, at the end of these little mundane problems, Kiryu's speeches hit you in the gut, because they are messages filled with such love and a kind of complexity that surprises you coming from him, a very flawed man. Every time Kiryu watches his kids do good, smiling, it warms my heart.
I didn't remember Rikiya's death scene being so well done, I honestly think it is one of the more memorable scenes RGG has done, even if his sacrifice is not that "well" staged. First time in the whole saga Kiryu completely breaks down as he cries and his voice cracks, yes he also cries when his father dies but, this time is so much stronger as if a channel of all his reprimed emotions hit him at that specific moment like a fucking train; I also think this moment is particularly sad since his death represents a direct consequence of his yakuza past getting up to him, he remembers he can't escape and all his loved ones can be taken away from him.
Mine acts as a "what Kiryu could have been." You could even say he's the personification of Nishiki, and he's standing in front of him, once again, but Kiryu is not the same. He has grown; now it's his time to give purpose to someone's life, and he does, resulting in what we see as Mine's ending. He thinks he's too far gone to keep living but decides to end it all with a pure reason not born from hatred.
This game has an odd connection to blood relationships and orphans. Kiryu is an orphan, Mine is an orphan, obviously, all his children are orphans. An orphan is a representation of a human being left stranded, deprived of the first connection to LOVE that a person CAN (not always) have, Mine is a representation of one possible outcome, resents others, resents relationships, and is distrustful since he was taken away of this so early in life. Kiryu on the other hand, recognizes this fact and builds bonds around him, he had the luck of always having caring people by his side. ODDLY SIMILAR TO GAARA AND NARUTO... wtf, crazy.
Kiryu is stabbed at the end; he falls on the ground as he bleeds, staring at the sky, with the possibility of just dying right there. And that's when he says, "Even in your final moments, you can still learn to believe in someone." I know this is directly related to Mine, but I think he's at peace because now he has something to live for, and he won't surrender like he has done when facing death. He smiles; he has a family waiting for him at Morning Glory. All is going to be okay.
2 Comments
@hyenashot Really well written, loved reading it, I'm glad there's ppl out there that could see the same I did in this special game tho
u should post this as your own y3 review tho ! I like it
u should post this as your own y3 review tho ! I like it
hyenashot
9 days ago
The main appeal to Y3 was always the orphanage to me and mostly due to my possibly excessive affection for Kiryu. Something that gets underappreciated and is often not recognized is Kiryu's growth. I've seen people address the older entries in the series as returning his character to a sort of status quo; that he's a sort of set-in-stone character who always maintains a troubled yet stoic and loving personality but this doesn't align with how I see the games, especially Y3. The orphanage is a great exploration into his character and to the lessons he's learned in the past few games. Y1 and Y2 Kiryu had us exploring the affects of his actions before the series began but Y3 had us explore who Kiryu's become due to the previous games. The Kiryu of 3 is more worldly both in the sense that he's wiser now but also that he has more connections to the world and more of a will to live. It can feel like he's just doing his best in 1 and 2 to maintain what little he has in a world that he doesn't recognize but 3 opens with a Kiryu who is burning with life and has everything he could ask for- someone who has carved out a place for himself and the people he loves to exist. Y1 saw him choose to be seperated from those closest to his heart and then losing them but by 3 he's learned that he can protect those he loves by staying close to them. We see, like you said, a different kind of Nishiki (someone who Kiryu just as easily could've been), who never found a family and who never carved a place in the world where he could love freely and openly, tear at him and try to upend his life but totally fail. At the end of Y1 Kiryu only has Haruka, an echo of the family he once had but at the end of Y3 he is all family'd up and Haruka feels much much more like his own daughter. It's a complete reverse of Y1 in that way.
I think all of the Yakuza games explore 'family' to some extent. Which I guess is somewhat inevitable in a series about Yakuza lol.
Orphans trying to find a home for themselves by joining yakuza 'families', some of whom would lose their lives to the yakuza like their parents did. Kiryu loves Haruka, his daughter, his niece, someone who shares none of his blood just as Kiryu was able to love Nishiki or Kazama.
Kiryu is a lover before all else and he fights to protect those he loves. His stern personality can obscure just how many people he believes to be his family but later games continue to explore just how much love he has to give the world, yet 3 is particularly special to me for being the first one to explore just how boundless his heart is and to say "Yeah, his family is still growing and it never stopped. He was hurting and gave up briefly in 2 but he never truly gave up or stopped loving."
The importance of Mine to me is that he's someone who is worldly in a completely opposite sense, he's bound to material connections and incapable of relationships. Kiryu fought to create a place in a world that rejected him but Mine simply became someone the world would accept, Kiryu learned lessons to pass on to the next generation so that this batch of kids who are just as desperate for belonging and family as he and Mine were at their age won't join the Yakuza or something similarly terrible- he's ensuring that they don't grow up like Kiryu or Mine, Mine however doesn't give a shit and bulldozes their ass. Mine is actively sowing the exact same discord into the world that he was forced to reap just by being born, he's carelessly ensuring that there will be more Mine's and Kiryu's in a world that has no place for the latter and no need for the former.
Mine wasn't able to be swayed to live for those he has like Kiryu was in 1 and chose death. as Kiryu did in 2. Kiryu laid there bleeding and chose to live, not hopeful that he would forge a life like in 1 but because he had one to go back to already.